Hurka in this last chapter explains why his recursive account of the theory of the good is much more complete than virtue theory. He says on page 246 that they cannot give people any reason to act rightly. But I would like to note that Hurka never makes any arguments regarding why the base goods are base goods.
He, in fact, lists three: pleasure, knowledge, and achievement. It would seem to complete his theory of the good; he would need to explain these are the base goods. In chapter seven, he extended his account as to showing how other base values, or perhaps values could be added to the machinery without much work. So, perhaps Hurka does not care about what are in the base goods and only needed there to be base goods. This is because nearly any argued upon good could be added from chapter 7.
But, I don’t believe this to be the case. I believe when Hurka made his selection of the base goods, he told care to pick certain ones. This is important; otherwise, how would the reader know that pleasure, knowledge, and achievement are base goods and evil isn’t a base good.
I’m not sure if there is an underlying premise which states this is the furthest it goes. But I do believe there needs to be some kind of argument for why these are base goods, much like Taylor explains in her book. She explains why vice is an evil thing. Or even what are qualifications for base goods, because I don’t think it can be assumed that at least knowledge and achievement are base goods. But once again, I’m not entirely sure that in matters. However, in earlier chapters, Hurka makes it clear that he is not a hedonist.
2 comments:
I think that you miscategorize Hurka's goal as a whole. You claim that Hurka's account is not complete since he does not work to justify his base goods. However, from the beginning of the book Hurka's goal was to explain how a recursive account of virtue would work. He wanted to show why the recursive account works better than other virtue theories. He is not concerned which base goods are utilized in his theory. In fact, he explicitly claims in chapter one that for his purposes it is not crucial which states are those that are intrinsically good. Further, he goes on to state "the specific goods in (BG) could be replaced by others" (12). He also goes onto explain briefly what pleasure, knowledge, and achievement entail and why he chose these goods. He finds that the goods encapsulate pleasantness, theory, and practice and thus give a full enough account for his purposes. Rather than claim that Hurka fails, one may say that he is even more successful because his theory is dynamic. Different theories of base goods may be applied and virtue and vice will still come to be through the recursive account. I do agree that finding base goods and proving why these are the base goods is a very important goal to pursue. However, it is not the aim of Hurka's book. It is not really fair to compare Taylor and Hurka in the way you do. Hurka seeks structure of virtue theory, while Taylor seeks content. The theories work to achieve their respective goals, which they qualified from the start. Perhaps those goals should be expanded, but for now we cannot say Hurka necessarily fails.
I think that Hurka stated his initial base goods under the assumption that they were generally accepted things in life which all strive for. In any walk of life these things generally bring a person to flourish. Although i do agree that there should be some input on Hurkas part on why he chose these. While the majority of the book revolves around pleasure and happiness to some degree, he rarely goes into knowledge and achievement. I feel that there are some strong arguments as to why theese two should not be included. Not because they are potentially detremental but i think that in some cases they would be irrelevent.
For example achievement seems redundant. If a person is flourishing it would seem that an achievement is part of the outcome. While i dont deny that achuievement is a good think i fail to see why achievement is included.
As for knowledge its possible that it could work against you. Perhaps learning that you have a terrible disease which will destroy your mind would cause a person to shut down rather than react to over come it. This is not a strong argument by any means, and these three base goods are all assumed to be true for hurka to make his points, however it still should be adressed as it would make his argument more complete and solid.
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